The Veil
“Some,” Fry began, “Are helpful.”
“Others,” he continued, “Less so.”
A smile drifted across his lips.
“Spirits,” Fry’s voice became operatic as the word roared from his lungs, “Spirits are people – were people – and after all every person is as different, well as different as you and I, my beloveds.”
At this he gestured towards his guests, lingering on Mrs Hortensia Allen, who was sat beside him at the table. He squeezed her hand. She was an easy read for a man of his talents. She always wanted to know the same things from beyond the veil, deep in the spirit realm.
Her husband.
Her child.
The same questions.
The same answers.
There was a good, consistent wage in comfort and solace, and the promise of affection – real affection, on Allen’s part at least – had grown too. For Fry this improved his prospects even further and made the Widow Allen his favourite patron.
And, upon this occasion in his parlour at his apartment in Kensal Rise, Mrs Allen had further consolidated her exulted position by bringing fresh faces to the gathering.
In total, there had been three unexpected people in the party. There was Mr Deacon Oliver, a broad-shouldered, dark-eyed but open-faced gentleman with a keen smile. He was accompanied by his daughter, Matilda (slight but with her father’s social traits) and finally her childhood friend, Eloise Nailer (chalk-skinned and quiet, with curls of auburn hair and pale green eyes).
On the one hand, it did mean that Fry couldn’t go through the usual motions, cut corners or use the ‘psychic shorthand’ he had developed with Mrs Allen over the last few years.
No, tonight he needed to perform, to entertain, to educate and to entrance.
But these were minor inconveniences at best.
Indeed, Fry saw these as opportunities to seize. It had been a while since he had had new people in his parlour. Fresh eyes to fill with the wonders of the afterlife he had at his command.
Fresh pursestrings to tease open.
Fresh fortunes to liberate.
And the evening began well enough for Fry. After the usual introductions had been made and Fry had sized up the new attendees, the group assembled around the table in his parlour. The lamps were turned down to barely a flicker and the spirits – such as they were – were contacted.
In the dreamlike dark, hands sought hands. The circle was completed.
Whispering, Fry explained what was happening at each step of the process so as not to upset the ladies present and to provide the necessary framework for his performance.
“Whatever happens, my beloveds, do not stand, do not break the circle. You have no need to fear. You have no need to worry. You will always be safe here in my parlour, with me as your guide. I promise, with my heart and soul, that no harm will come to you in these four walls.”
It was the one promise Fry made that he truly believed in because it was – short of an unfortunate act of force majeure – true. No harm would come from the spirit world because no spirits would be present.
Yet as much as it was true it was also the most dramatic part of the occasion. The sense of dread of saying no harm would come brought forth in his patrons thoughts of peril beyond this realm and helped cement in the sense of supernatural wonder that already hung heavy in the room.
“I will begin, as has become tradition in this home, to reach out to Mrs Allen’s family. We will stretch ourselves out, make contact beyond this mortal realm and speak with the spirits connected to us through blood and years.”
Silence. Stillness.
“Our beloved Mr Allen, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, Mr Allen, and move among us.”
Nothing. Perhaps, an imperceptibly small drop in temperature. Fry had, as usual, diligently left all the windows and doors in his old house ever so slightly ajar. On a usual day, at a usual time, the average person wouldn’t even acknowledge a difference, but at night, in the dark, with talk of spirits and the way Fry could manipulate the mood of the room, the slightest draught could feel like the first heaves of a boreal storm.
Fry took a theatrical breath.
“Our beloved Mr Allen, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, Mr Allen, and move among us.”
Again, nothing. The young misses Oliver and Salter shifted in their seats. Exchanged looks. Smiled to each other. Fry noticed. He knew he could use this to his advantage.
He began again.
“Our beloved Mr Allen, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with…”
Fry stopped abruptly as a rap on the table broke through his words. It made the young patrons jump with a start. A wry smile drifted across Mr Oliver’s face, while Mrs Allen beamed broadly, bouncing up and down in her seat.
“Oh my, oh yes, my boys had me worried there for a moment. Oh please do tell me who is here this evening, Mr Fry – is it Albert or our Robert?”
Fry laughed softly. Externally, for Mrs Allen’s benefit at least, this was a laugh of relief. Relief that a connection had been made and that the spirits she so desperately wanted were calling. Internally, however, Fry was relieved once again he had opened the door to another round of remuneration.
“It is…” Fry stared into the void in the middle of the table, “Why, it’s your husband, Mrs Allen. It’s Mr Allen. He’s here and he’s smiling. He’s so happy. Happy you’re here of course and happy you’ve made new friends and you’ve brought them along to meet him… and little Robert of course.”
“Oh yes, yes. Albert, Albert – it’s been such a week!” Mrs Allen rolled her eyes and looked to the heavens. “Robert, I hope you’ve been behaving for your father? Oh what a week and yes, I’ve brought Mr Oliver and young Miss Oliver and young Miss Nailer too, yes yes. You see we met in the park behind the house last Tuesday gone and they said they were looking for people, people where… where you are. And so naturally I said they should come with me to visit Mr Fry and they could meet you both and they could find who they were looking for too and… ohhh, what a week!”
She squeezed Fry’s hand, and Miss Oliver’s hand, looking at each one in turn and with tears of joy welling up and running slowly down her face.
“So what else does your husband have to say for himself today? Or your son?” Mr Oliver asked, smiling. He was addressing Mrs Allen, but looking fixedly at Fry.
Fry coughed to clear his throat, taking the moment to gather his thoughts – and the thoughts of Mr Allen.
“The Allens… Mr Allen and young Master Robert.” He looked into the distance, his eyes flickering upwards rhythmically, “They are happy, they are content, they are at peace. They are proud of you, Mrs Allen. They are proud of their wife and mother. They want to make sure you are happy too and that your new friends will take care of you and they understand how important you are to them.”
Fry was pleased with himself here, reinforcing his hold on Mrs Allen of course, but also underlining to his new guests that this was a very real, very important part of her life.
“Oh I am trying to be happy in spite of it all, and communing like this with you brings me such contentment and the Olivers and Miss Nailer completely understand how important you are to me and and and, oh it’s just so lovely to hear you again. You mean the world to me and I hope and I really hope that…”
BANG
There was a rap on the table and Fry threw his head back and let out a guttural noise, squeezing Mrs Allen’s and Mr Oliver’s hands harder and tighter.
“They… they are gone”, Fry exclaimed, “But they went happy. So happy. Your contentment fills them with warmth, Mrs Allen. Thank you Albert, thank you Robert. Can you feel it, Mrs Allen? Can you feel the warmth from them? In the air?”
“I can, oh I can! Oh thank you, Mr Fry, thank you – ohhhh, the relief it fills my heart. Oh, thank you…”
She looked around the table at the other faces and caught herself with a look of gentle sorrow.
“Oh my days, we must gift this feeling - this relief - to our new friends, Mr Fry. Oh we must. Please help them as you have always helped me, won’t you?”
A small smile from Mr Fry. He leaned back and took a breath, closing his eyes and sighing.
“We will help them Mrs Allen,” Fry said, “We will let them reach out and find their loved one. I promise, we will and they will know the peace that you know.”
He opened his eyes and smiled at Mrs Allen, before turning to each of his three new visitors in turn and fixing each with his deep blue eyes.
“So, remind me, who is it that you want to connect with this evening? Who in the spirit realm, beyond the veil, do you wish to invite into this parlour tonight?”
Mr Oliver leant forward, and speaking in a voice scarcely above a whisper, he began: “Mr Fry, we would like, very much, if it is not too much of an effort, to reach out to Grandmother Charlotte. She meant the world to us and it would fill our hearts if we could commune to her from the… the… beyond.”
Fry smiled his best, most rehearsed, most comforting smile.
“Of course, of course,” he said, reassuringly, “We can try. We will try. Grandmother Charlotte, if she’s there, we will find her. We will reach out.”
Fry leant forward in his seat.
“Are we all ready to venture beyond the veil again. Are we ready, my beloveds, to receive Grandmother…”
He looked pointedly over at Mr Oliver.
“Charlotte,” Mr Oliver completed.
“Grandmother Charlotte?” he continued, “Are we ready to bring her into this realm tonight?”
Without waiting for a response, he kept the momentum going.
“Let us all hold hands again. Remember, we must keep the circle complete, we must stay seated, we must do everything we can to welcome the spirits, to welcome Grandmother Charlotte into our embrace.”
Checking that everyone was ready for the performance to start, he began again:
“Our beloved Grandmother Charlotte, we bring you gifts from life into death. Commune with us, Grandmother Charlotte, and move among us.”
Fry took a breath and prepared to start on the second run of the treatise, but he was interrupted by a thud. Not the rap on the table that he used to fool his usual patrons. This wasn’t a device of his own making and it took him by surprise, and he went to loosen his grip, but Mrs Allen and Mr Oliver held firm.
“Grand… mother Charlotte?”
There was a moment of silence. It seemed to last an age. But then the thud came again. And then again. And a fourth time.
“She’s here,” Miss Salter said, looking up to the pocket of space above the table.
Fry felt his skin pucker. Though this wasn’t one of his draughts. This was something else. Something… other.
A fifth thud.
A flustered Fry tripped over his words: “What? Wha-what do you want with us today, Grandmother Charlotte? What messages do you have for us beyond the veil?”
The air cooled further. There was a whistling. The pitch drifted until there was something else there. Something other than noise.
Words.
A voice.
Dry and rasping.
“Who calls me forward on this night? Who calls Grandmother Charlotte?” it asked.
Fry was transfixed. The air above the table looked thick, almost milky. This is where the voice was coming from. This is the source. This was where the veil had parted.
His eyes widening, Fry looked to his patrons for comfort but found none. Each of them – Mrs Allen, the Olivers and Miss Salter – had the same milky look in their eyes, as though they were bound inextricably to their surroundings.
The voice repeated its demand.
“Who calls Grandmother Charlotte?”
“W-well, we do Grandmother Charlotte,” stuttered Fry, “We do. We want to commune with you and see if you have any messages for us from the beyond. Any words you want us to heed. What can we… what ought we do Grandmother Charlotte?”
A creaking, eerie noise. Laughter? But empty. Hollow.
“We mean no harm, we just…”
“NO HARM?” The voice boomed through the parlour.
The low lamps flickered fiercely.
Glassware and crockery rattled.
“You cannot call upon Grandmother Charlotte and not mean harm. You cannot cross the veil to receive me.”
Tears were forming in Fry’s eyes. “I-I-I’ve been asked to commune with you, to find out how you are and to ask you news from wherever you now reside.”
“Suffering,” came the response, “Always suffering. Then. Now. Forever. And you will suffer too. “
“Me? Me?” Fry was as aggrieved as he was terrified, “Why should I suffer? What have I done to deserve this?”
”Deserve? It is not about deserving. It is never about deserving. I did not deserve this.”
Fry whimpered. ”I am sorry, I am so sorry, what can I do? What can I do to help?”
“There is nothing to be done. It is the lot of our kind. The lot of those who are victims. Victims of them.”
“Them? Who?” asked Fry.
“Persecutors. Those who mocked me, calling a barren old woman like me ‘Grandmother’. Those who told tales that I was witchborne. That I had powers unnatural. Those wielding the Hammer. Those who caught and tortured and killed… me. Who took my life and took my soul and took… everything.”
“Oh my goodness. Oh, sweet lord in heaven above,” Fry looked up and pleaded with the benevolent almighty, “That is dreadful but that is not me. I don’t have powers. I am not special. I cannot commune, not properly at any rate. This is all illusion. This is not… reality.”
“But that is my story too,” the voice came back stony and calm, “I did not mean to entwine with the worlds beyond. I spoke of what I thought others wanted. I gave them comfort, though false. And they came. They came for me. And wearing the colours of the hunters. Those demons foul twisted word and reason to their own end and fed off my suffering. Fed and fed, like they are doing again tonight.”
“What? Which demons do you speak of?“
“Those caught in the thrall here. In your room. At your table. Feeding,” the voice began to crack, “Fee-ding on my suff-er-ing and soo-oo-oon… yoursssssss.”
The detached voice grew fainter and began to peter out once more. The milkiness in the air started to dissipate and dissolve into the rest of the room. The eyes of Fry’s patrons, slowly cleared too, returning to normal as the connection to the spirit realm began to break down.
Silence. Growing silence.
Mrs Allen and Mr Oliver and the young Misses Oliver and Salter all turned to Fry and smiled. He felt the grips on his hands tighten and he knew.
He knew what awaited him beyond the veil.
You can also listen to an audio version of this short story, read by Ben Kearns - available on Substack and wherever you get your favourite weird podcasts and audiobooks.
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